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Copy I 




SPEECH 



OF THE 



Hon. LEMUEL E. QUIGG, 



AS 



Temporary Chairman 



OF THE 



Republican State Convention 

OF NEW YORK, 



AT 



Saratoga, September 23d, J 902* 






i 



SPEECH 



OF THE 



Hon. LEMUEL R QUIGG, 



AS 



Temporary Chairman 



OF THE 



Republican State Convention 

OF NEW YORK, 



AT 



Saratoga, September 23d^ 1902* 



STRWrTAa mriJBf I»RHSgB, 






\ 

\ 



Mr* Quigg's Address at Saratoga, before 

the Republican State Convention, 

September 23d, J 902. 



This is the first Republican State Convention that has assembled 
in New York since the death of William McKinley. Nowhere in 
the land is his memory more precious. How great he was, another 
age, which sees the accomplishments of this in their ultimate re- 
sults, will say. How good he was we know. Between him and 
the people there was a mutual confidence which gave to his leader- 
ship a quality singularly appropriate to the relation between the 
citizens of a Republic and their Chief Magistrate. The genius 
of the Republican party was perfectly illustrated in the character 
of WilHam McKinley and was witnessed by his work. The 
successes of his life were not those of a selfish and ambitious 
man. They were the triumphs of great principles happily affecting 
the fortunes and daily life of millions of people. They were so 
great a triumph that they survive his death. Stronger than ever 
the party that cherishes his principles goes marching on. 

As representatives of that party in the State of New York 
we are met under happy conditions. For eight years we have 
enjoyed public favor. We have successively elected four Re- 
publican Governors, each of whom at the end of his term of 
service has left his State more prosperous and his own name more 
respected. One of these, summoned to the highest destiny that 
it is within the life of any man to reach, by his progressive ideas, 
his ardent patriotism, his splendid courage and his lofty integrity 
has profoundly impressed the country. Nowhere is his leadership 
more cordially accepted than in his own State. We are with him 
and back of him, and no small part of the enthusiasm by which the 
majority for the Republican State ticket will be augmented here 
this fall will testify our pride in the character and our hope in 
the career of Theodore Roosevelt. 



It is not the province of the army within the walls to tell the 
army without where it shall make its attack and we have no 
advice to offer to our Democratic friends on that point. If there 
is any issue that suits their purposes better than ano<her, it is 
their privilege to make the most of it. But there are certain facts 
that must embarrass them whichever way they turn. The Amer- 
ican people are better off to-day than they ever were before, and 
nothing the Democrats can say will disturb that solid truth. Our 
country's reputation and influence as a social and commercial 
factor in the progress of the world are higher and greater to-day 
than they ever were before and there is no Democratic argument 
that can dim the lustre of that splendid fact. The affairs of this 
commonwealth are being conducted to-day with sounder sense 
and better results than for many a year, and this proof of good 
administration is within every taxpayer's knowledge. 

It is no wonder that in this satisfactory condition of public 
affairs, brought about under Republican government, the Demo- 
crats should be troubled about an issue. The man in the moon, 
unacquainted with the exigencies of Democratic partisanship, 
looking down upon us in his sane and tranquil way, may curiously 
ask, "Why should they want an issue when everything goes on 
so well?" But it sometimes seems as though opposition were 
the manifest destiny of that type of mind which is drawn into the 
Democratic primaries. It does not wait to be justified before it 
opposes. It would oppose the Ten Commandments if they ap- 
peared, as occasionally it is necessary some of them should, in a 
Republican platform. 

Who that has heard the ccwitroversies of the last two years in 
respect of the Government's policy in the Philippine Islands would 
have imagined, for instance, that the Democrats would oppose a 
bill granting amnesty to the Revolutionists and substituting the 
rule of law for that of force? What else have they been saying 
except that this is what we ought to do ; and yet, when we offered 
to do it, they stood out in angry opposition. They would not 
even discuss the bill. Its plan of government was ignored. But 
with one voice they set up a rancorous outcry against the Army. 
It was pilloried in their speeches as an undisciplined body of 
blood-thirsty brutes whose acts of cruelty and spoliation were 
bringing reproach upon the country. What little truth there was 

4 



in such charges was not entitled to mention outside of a Cabinet 
meeting and yet it was so magnified by Democratic malice that 
the honor ol' the American soldier has become a chief issue in this 
campaign. 

It is not an issue that we shall seek to avoid. We may be 
surprised that they should raise it, and a little mortified, but not 
in the least dismayed. We, for our part, will stand by the Army. 
We shall vote to maintain its honor as it has bled to maintain 
curs. We shall cry shame upMi its defamers. We shall say that 
our citizen soldier, blood of^pTood and bone of our bone, taught 
in the school of American liberty, impressed from our American 
homes into the Army by no other force than a patriotic sense of 
duty and a genuine love of the flag, having no other cause to 
assert than the welfare of mankind, is not cruel, is not wicked, 
is not an oppressor, but instinct with the spirit of the country he 
serves and perfectly understanding that he is engaged in an 
errand of mercy and civilization, is of all men the safest on 
whom to dress the colors of a National uniform. Unlearned in 
the enterprises of conquest and ambition, his sword is the torch 
of progress, his rifle the bulwark of peace. 

Criticism of the policy which has been pursued in the Philippine 
Islands falls flat on the public ear because when each practical 
American applies to himself the test question — What would I do 
if the responsibility were mine? — ^lie can find no other conclusion 
than that he would aim to do precisely what he sees is being done. 
He might frankly admit the universal application of all the 
maxims quoted by the Anti-Imperialists about liberty and the 
right of self-government. He might even confess a prejudice 
against colonial enterprises by the United States. He might go 
so far as to wish that the Spanish War had not involved us in 
obligations respecting the Philippines, and yet, with all that, he 
would know that if the duty of present decision and action de- 
volved upon him, he would seek first, to establish order throughout 
the Philippine country, and, second, to erect a system of local 
self-government there by which the capacity of the Filipinos to 
manage their own affairs might be safely and thoroughly tested. 

So far he could see clearly, and beyond that he knows he would 
not immediately go. Practical statesmanship occupies itself with 
present problems. It realizes that in this world of change and 



rapid movement there is nothing more foolish than to anticipate 
too remote a future. The object it keeps constantly in mind is 
not to create future situations, but to give wise shape and safe 
direction to present ones. The epithet of Imperialist applied to a 
man who believes in this sound and necessary policy is as point- 
less as it would be to call him, in Tony Waller's phrase, a griffin 
^r a unicorn. Whatever an Imperialist may be, he is not a man 
who, having authority over another, confers upon him the Amer- 
ican common school and the American ballot box. These are not 
the agents of oppression. They are the high priests of liberty, and 
Republican legislation has placed them at the service of the 
Philippine people. The American voter knows the common 
school and the ballot box too well to doubt the good results of 
their work. He knows that if the Filipinos can be made capable 
of self-government, public schools and free elections will make 
them so. He knows that if these fail, it will be the fault of the 
material and not of the method, and before making up his mind 
what shall be the final political relation between this country and 
the Philippine Islands he is satisfied to await the issue of this ex- 
periment. 

Meanwhile, he is not to be frightened by the scarecrow of 
"Imperialism." Entertaining no other thought or purpose towards 
the people of these colonies than of the utmost benevolence, he 
imputes none to his neighbors. Who, among eighty millions of 
Americans, would not be heartily glad to see the Filipinos an 
intelligent, informed and independent people? Who would wish 
to suppress their National aspirations, aspirations than can never 
be otherwise than just? What free American, rejoicing in his 
own birth-right, would be willing to hold any human creature in 
other subjection than was necessary to the discharge of a specific 
public duty ? That there is a duty on our part in respect of these 
islands, not only to their people and to ourselves, but to the other 
Nations, that it calls on us to establish and maintain order, to set 
going the wheels of government and social progress and to abide 
our task at least until native forces of civilization are in full and 
easy control, will not be denied in any party platform. When we 
can come away or whether by that time their interests and ours 
will have become so interwoven that neither of us will want that 
we should come away, are questions too far ahead for pronounce- 

6 



ment now. What we must do is so to perform our present duty 
as not to embarrass a just and proper answer when these questions 
are presented by events. 

Nor shall we. Liberty of conscience and religion, liberty of 
thought and speech, equal laws, free schools and local self-govern- 
ment can check no worthy impulse there or promote any scheme of 
aggrandizement here. They are the meat on which we have our- 
selves fed and grown great. They are the wings on which our own 
genius has mounted and in the face of such proof of our good 
purpose who shall say that there is any destiny, however exalted, 
from which our arm would bar the Filipino Nation ? 

Lust of empire is not to be charged against a party which, 
with every opportunity so to delay the performance of the condi- 
tions of the Treaty of Paris that Cuba must in the end have 
prayed for admission into the Union, actually made haste to bring 
about the establishment of the Cuban Government and the with- 
drawal from Cuba of every semblance of American control. In 
the execution of these obligations, the Republican party went far 
beyond the requirements of ordinary good faith and manifested 
that lively sympathy with the national hopes of the Cuban people 
which furnishes the best answer that could be given to the charge 
that we are Imperialists. Just what that charge means perhaps 
nobody can say; but if it means that we believe in arbitrary 
methods of government, the answer is that we have builded a 
Republic and added it to the independent sovereignties of the 
world. If it means that we seek to impose our dominion upon 
foreign and unwilling peoples, the answer is that we have re- 
frained from taking a Garden of Eden when at a nod and a beck 
it would have gladly come. If there is another instance in history 
of similar moderation, even of such scrupulous fidelity to the 
letter and spirit of a war-ending treaty, I do not know it. But I 
do know that while every Cabinet in Europe is sounding the 
praises of the American Government for its generosity and fair- 
dealing, it is reserved to the Democratic party here at home to carp 
and cavil and scold and criticise. 

What more we should do for Cuba than has been done is easy 
for a Free Trader to say ; but to those who believe in the policy of 
a Protective Tariff the answer comes with more difficulty. To 
hisist that anything remains to be done as an obligation of honor 

7 



seems rhetorical rather than just. It is true that we expect the 
Cubans to subordinate their public relations to ours, and m re- 
turn we have engaged to defend their independence. We have 
given the exact equivalent of what we have required. On the 
other hand, we can well afford to recognize the obligations of good 
neighborliness, and extend to these people, so dependent upon our 
markets, exceptional advantages for the sale of their produce 
here and if this is necessary to their welfare, it may fairly be 
urged upon us as a public duty. 

It is the singular fortune of this country that the political 
problem most under discussion is not how to get its people profit- 
ably employed, but how more evenly to distribute the rich re- 
wards of their labor. It was not always so. There is no need 
of a long memory to recall the days when idle workshops and 
dull markets agitated the public mind. They are no further back 
than the time of the last Democratic Administration. What has 
happened since then is the most wonderful story of National 
achievement that has ever been told. And it is simply the story of 
a sound money system and a protective tariff. Not that to these 
we owe fair skies, rich fields or that dauntless energy which is 
the chief trait of the American character. But good weather and 
a fertile soil and an unbounded ambition were all present here 
when free silver and free trade blocked the parh of progress. 
What we have now that we didn't have then are only these — a 
tariff law that protects industry and a money law that gives equal 
significance to everything issued by public authority as a dollar. 
From the loom of these two statutes we have woven a garment 
of prosperity that dazzles the w^orld ! 

Twenty thousand millions of dollars have been added in five 
years to the assessed valuation of the real and personal property 
of our citizens, and this is only that part of what they have ac- 
complished in adding to their private wealth which necessarily 
becomes a matter of record. More than a million of our people 
are depositors in savings banks to-day who had no such account 
five years ago and the additional deposits amount to over six 
hundred milHon dollars. The individual deposits in national banks 
have increased in that time more than a thousand millions. 

No word will be said in this campaign to challenge the state- 
ment that every man in this country who is willing and able to 

8 



work for his living enjoys to-day the opportunity of doing so. 
No word will be said to chahenge the statement that this is true 
of the entire period succeeding the election of McKinley and was 
not true of any part of the four Democratic years prior to his 
election. In that free trade period fully one-fourth of the people 
were generally out of employment, and although the country 
was at peace the Government was obliged to borrow two hundred 
and sixty-two million dollars with which to carry on its operations. 
In those four years the liabilities resulting from business failures 
were almost a thousand millions of dollars. 

Nothing ailed the country until the Democratic party got hold 
of it. Industrially and commercially its triumphal march began 
under the Harrison Administration, and there is no other ex- 
planation of its interruption than the certainty that a free trade bill 
was to be passed and the probability that a free silver bill might 
be. Those free traders who seek to place the sole responsibility for 
the calamities of the Cleveland period upon the free silver wing 
of their party must remember that the trouble began before the 
free silver issue became acute and in spite of the fact that the 
country perfectly understood that it was Mr. Cleveland's purpose 
to maintain gold payments. The trouble began as soon as it was 
known by the fact of Cleveland's election that the industrial condi- 
tions fixed by the McKinley law were to be upset. Capital and 
enterprise do not wait until the storm bursts before they seek 
shelter. Nor are they so timid that they wait until the final drop 
of rain has fallen before they come out. As soon as the clouds 
part and a rift of blue sky shows between and the rainbow of 
promise appears, their activity renews. Once assured that the 
old policies were to be restored, that the gold standard would be 
upheld and that they would not be required to produce in competi- 
tion with the underpaid labor of Europe, the business interests of 
the country went heartily at work. 

It is no longer suggested that our prosperity is only seeming and 
not real. With a foreign trade far in excess, both as to imports 
and exports, of that which was had under the Wilson tariff, it is 
no longer claimed, or, if it is, the claim is made only to be laughed 
at, that protection and a foreign commerce are incompatible. 
Under a government of competency and integrity and a protective 
lariflf. while adding thousands of millions to their private wealth, 

9 



the people have prosecuted a costly foreign war, paying all its ex- 
penses as they went along, completely wiping out the small war 
debt they momentarily created, promptly meeting every ordinary 
governmental charge and actually reducing the interest-bearing 
debt that had been handed down from the previous Administra- 
tion. The policy of protection to American industries will not 
be abandoned by the Republican party. So long as the wages paid 
in countries with which we must compete are less than enough 
to maintain a workingman's family in comfort, so long will our 
tariff system protect our home markets for our home producers ! 

The question of trusts and unlawful combinations has no more 
connection with this subject than the penal code has with the gen- 
eral business of life. The man who would destroy the protective 
system in order to destroy trusts would pull his house down to 
catch a burglar. There is no business, not one, in which a trust is 
engaged in which hundreds of other producers, independent of 
the trust, are not also engaged. There is no industrial system, 
whether protective or free trade in character, where trusts do not 
flourish. Protection is the foundation stone of Republican policy 
and it will not fall before the charge that in enabling everybody 
to do better than he ever did before it has enabled some to do too 
well. 

Men are not always as good as they are clever or as generous 
as they are successful. It is in human nature to pursue an advan- 
tage as far as it can be made to go, and often it is borne to unlaw- 
ful extremes. The Republican party was quick to recognize, when 
the new industrial method of combination began to manifest itself, 
that the people needed to be defended against its usurpations and 
exactions. It quickly saw the peril in which the modem trust 
placed the principle of competition. It has made, is making 
and will make an honest effort to reach those features of business 
combination which are unlawful and injurious. The Sherman 
Act was such an effort, and President Roosevelt is giving to the 
people the earnest of what they are frankly accepting as his sin- 
cere purpose to examine this question in all its phases and to reach 
such a remedy of actual evils as will not interfere at the same time 
with the business development and prosperity that we all wish to 
continue. 

And right there is afforded another illustration of the dift'erence 

to 



between the Republican and the Democratic parties. "Put one 
millionaire in stripes!" cries the Democratic leader; "put one 
millionaire in stripes and it will do more good than all the Presi- 
dent's speeches !" This vicious exclamation speaks with singular 
accuracy the temper and purpose of the Democratic party as it is 
now constituted. For one hundred and twenty-five years, on every 
recurring Fourth of July, the orators of every political party in 
this country have preached the glorious doctrine that this was the 
land to live in, the land of opportunity, where equal laws obtained, 
where each man's rights were identical and where industry, char- 
acter, ambition and brains, freed of the fetters of social prejudice, 
were allowed to win and were bound to win ! But the Democratic 
party has set up a new doctrine, and whether its specific demand 
is for free silver at sixteen to one or for the suppression of trusts, 
what it is aiming at is to array the poor against the rich, to set 
one class of our citizens against another class, and to preach to 
those who are less fortunate and less competent than others the 
miserable doctrine of class envy and prejudice. "Put the million- 
aire in stripes !" cries this representative Democratic leader. What 
he means and what his party has come to mean is that those who 
do not succeed are justified in being offended at those who do, and 
it is this levelling spirit, this spirit of socialism, which, within the 
last eight or ten years, has displaced all the old-time principles of 
the Democratic party and has come at last to be its distinguishing 
purpose. 

I am one of those who live to-day on the wages of yesterday 
except when I am anticipating those of to-morrow, but it is no 
offense to me that somebody else has done well. Instead of being 
an offense it is an inspiration, for it teaches me that what others 
have done I yet may do. Or, if not I, if I have grown too old 
and tired and weary worn in the struggle for life yet to achieve 
success — my boy, he can do it and I want the chance for him ! I 
want these equal laws, these fair opportunities, this splendid 
American heritage of a fair field and no favor to survive for the 
sake of the boy that comes after me. What is it that these Amer- 
ican successes teach, whether of fame or fortune? What else than 
this— that there is no star in the deep blue sky of infinite oppor- 
tunity too high or too bright to come within the just aspiration of 
an American boy ! 



n 



Much has been said in advocacy of a business administration of 
pubHc affairs, the effort being constantly made to discriminate 
between such an administration and one into which pohtical con- 
siderations enter. But it is the pride of the RepubUcan party that 
it was given to the official head of its organization, when he became 
Governor of New York, to illustrate to the people of the State 
what a business administration is. Its guiding principle is found 
in his belief, which every public act has manifested, that party 
service and public service are governed by the same moral laws 
and that to make the public welfare the sole object of his concern 
is the only way by which a public officer can truly serve his party. 
Governor Odell brought to the high office he holds that thor- 
ough knowledge of affairs which was to be acquired only by long 
years of political activity. Alost men bring a good heart and an 
honest mind to the performance of a public trust, but to these, to 
that fine integrity, that reasonable judgment, that evenness of 
temper and fairness of mind which had made him so strong a 
leader in his party, to all of these, the prime essentials of a suc- 
cessful public servant, there was added in his case a profound and 
detailed knowledge of the business and of the personnel of every 
department of the State Government. 

The trouble with most business administrations, as we have had 
them heretofore, is that their head was compelled to spend almost 
the whole of his term of office getting acquainted with his duties, 
with the character of his subordinates and with the laws, prece- 
dents and methods governing his office. With all of these Gov- 
ernor Odell had been made familiar by twenty years of active, un- 
selfish interest in the politics of the State. He had watched the 
growth of our State institutions, knew the conditions out of which 
they sprung, knew the causes they were meant to serve, knew the 
evils and excesses to which they were liable, personally knew the 
hundreds of men in positions of trust and responsibility, and en- 
tered upon the duties of the great office to which he had been 
called sure-footed and confident. When he sent to the Legislature 
that first remarkable message in which their interests and affairs 
were spread out before the people with masterful orderliness, 
every statement sustained, every recommendation approved by 
convincing reasons, the public demonstration was complete that 
the highest type of public servant is the honest man, the business 

12 



man and the trained politician met in one. This demonstration 
has been so many times repeated that now, at the close of his first 
term of service, it is not a partisan but a general testimony which 
proclaims the administration of Benjamin B. Odell to be perhaps 
and upon the whole the very best that the State of New York has 
ever known ! 

We are here to tender to it the tribute of a party renomination, 
but in doing so we shall be only giving formal expression to a 
popular sentiment, which has been growing in sincerity and 
strength from the day he took office. The fact that we have been 
elected for the well understood purpose of renominating Governor 
Odell is an interesting proof of the excellence of our political 
methods. We all know, each from the sentiment of his own 
community, that Governor Odell will draw to the support of the 
Republican ticket the votes of thousands of men the distinct pur- 
pose of whose ballots will be to commend and reward faithful 
and efficient service. 

The ease with which real estate and the difficulty with which 
other forms of property can be reached for taxation purposes 
supplies one of the most serious problems of State and local 
government. For twenty-five years the Republican party in New 
York has been endeavoring to solve this problem, and the three 
great Acts which in that time it has placed upon the statute books, 
supplemented by the legislation recommended by Governor Odell. 
seem to have rendered the solution final and complete. It was 
always a Republican Legislature that passed, and generally a 
Republican Governor who signed, these important statutes and 
the acts amending and improving them and to-day it is practically 
true that no dollar of revenue for State purposes is raised from 
real property. This reform has been worked out with much diffi- 
culty and often in the face of bitter Democratic opposition. 

The Liquor Tax Law, for instance, now so universally approved, 
which, after paying four million dollars into the State Treasury, 
supplies to the cities and counties twice as much revenue as for- 
merly they obtained under the license system, was enacted after 
the bitterest opposition of the Democrats and remains a law in 
the face of their repeated threats to repeal it. The first collections 
from corporations for the privilege of doing business amounted 
to less than one hundred and fifty thousand dollars. To-day, 

13 



after twenty years of administration, no dollar of capital in an 
incorporated business escapes taxation except such capital as is 
engaged in manufacture. The same intelligent idea which appears 
in the Republican party's tariff legislation has controlled its treat- 
ment of manufacturing enterprises in the State of New York. 
Every effort has been made to encourage and promote them and 
especially by the first Legislature of the Odell Administration. So 
immediate was the response to the Governor's wise and liberal re- 
commendations that the first year after their enactment into law 
witnessed the investment of three times as much capital in manu- 
facturing industries in this State as had been invested in any 
previous year. The receipts from corporations for the fiscal year 
about to close will reach six millions of dollars. The tax upon 
inheritances has given a revenue that has annually increased from 
less than one hundred thousand dollars to more than four millions. 
And the enormous sum of one hundred and fifty million dollars 
has been derived in a period of twenty years from these Re- 
publican laws for the payment of State expenses to the direct 
relief of the burden on real estate. 

I repeat that these are Republican laws, Republican in concep- 
tion. Republican in enactment and, so far as the best results are 
concerned. Republican in execution. It was necessary for the last 
Democratic State Government, notwithstanding some help from 
these Republican laws and although our expenses then were far 
less than they have become since the State assumed the care of 
the charitable institutions, to raise more than ten millions of 
dollars from taxes on real estate, and even then the treasury was 
charged with a deficit. So provident has been the record of the 
Odell Administration in public expenditure and so thorough has 
been its enforcement of these three great taxing laws upon cor- 
porations, inheritances and the sales of liquor, that when, a year 
from now, the twenty-two millions of appropriations by the last 
Legislature have been met, there will remain in the treasury an 
unexpended balance in excess of three millions of dollars. 

The signal service which Governor Odell has rendered is to 
prove that every necessary and legitimate expense of State Gov- 
ernment, with the exercise of only a fair and proper economy, can 
be met without imposing one dollar of taxation upon the farm 
owners, the house owners and the rent payers of any community, 

14 



and without laying hard or unreasonable charges upon other 
forms of property. It is true that he inherited from his Republican 
predecessors many of the conditions which enabled this demon- 
stration to be made. The intelligent and far-seeing statesman- 
ship of the Republican Legislature twenty years ago began them. 
Almost every Republican Legislature that has since met has ex- 
tended them, added to them, improved them. But with this flow 
of money from indirect sources into the State treasury, there came 
also a tendency towards extravagance, towards the multiplication 
of government bureaus and departments, towards a complicated 
and expensive system of government. At all of these evils Gov- 
ernor Odell has struck with stern and unyielding force. He has 
known what it ought to cost to do a public work and he has per- 
mitted it to cost no more. His influence has been exerted with 
the committees of the Legislature to prevent unnecessary appro- 
priations and when that did not suffice he has not hesitated to exert 
the Constitutional power of his veto. He has known what bureaus 
and departments were doing good work and what were not. He 
has known where their various functions might wisely be consoli- 
dated or otherwise brought into harmonious and less expensive 
operation. With loyal and sympathetic Legislatures to sustain 
him, he has made what amounts to a general revision of the 
methods and machinery of State Government, and with the im- 
posing result that more work and better work are being done at 
an actually reduced expense to the Government. He has seen, 
too, where certain forms of incorporated capital were escaping 
taxation, and, without injury to the private business of the 
people, almost without protest from those on whom the new 
burdens were to fall, his recommendations have added largely to 
the stream of State revenue^ 

We are collecting more money, we are spending less money and 
we are doing better work as a State Government under the busi- 
ness administration of Governor Odell. This is why it is 
called a business administration. This is why he is praised 
for his sober sense and sound judgment. And it came 
about, to the glory of his party and the welfare of his State, be- 
cause he brought into his high office the integrity of an honest 
man and the knowledge of one who from his earliest manhood 
had taken a lively personal interest in public afifairs. 

15 



In this election as in every other the voter who wants his vote 
to count must choose between the two great parties. The Demo- 
cratic party's highest usefulness is served and its whole force is 
spent in opposition. It is good enough for ballast, but it is not 
the fabric of which to make a sail. It cannot stand the tests of 
time and experience. Its assertions are always denied by the 
event. It is always explaining why it was wrong. Radical it runs 
to folly, conservative it falls into reaction. It seeks anybody's 
vote and justifies nobody's confidence. The Republican party's 
strength is derived from the fact that it always takes the moral 
side of an issue. It is first conscientious, next opportune. The 
voter who gives his influence to the Democratic party helps to 
make a dead weight. He who votes with the Republican party 
adds to a living force! 




16 



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